


That Wasn't a Sheep, Dean

by Dogsled



Series: Season 13 Codas [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Gen, Hallucination Castiel, POV Dean Winchester, Post-Episode: s13e02 The Rising Son, Shippy Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-20 07:13:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12427614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dogsled/pseuds/Dogsled
Summary: Post 13x02 Coda, so spoilers!Title and tags say it all.





	That Wasn't a Sheep, Dean

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS you have been warned

1.

 

“I’m fine, Sam,” Dean snapped. Not for the first time, either. Sam had been trying to get him to stop driving for almost two hours now, and Dean was doggedly forcing himself to stay awake, biting the inside of his cheek every time he felt himself drifting. The car still hadn’t swung into opposing traffic, so he considered that to be something of a win, but exhaustion was finally starting to get to him.

 

They’d set off two hours after sundown, after one hell of a bad day, but there were still ten hours of driving to go before they had any hope of reaching the bunker.

 

Still, the thought of putting his head down on a pillow didn’t appeal to Dean at all. He wanted to stay awake. If he was still awake, then it was still the same day; the same day that he’d lost Cas, not the day after, or the day after that, or weeks after losing him. Somehow if it was never later, then Dean didn’t have to start counting the days. He didn’t have to worry about the inevitable point when enough days had passed that he was now supposed to magically move on from the fact that Castiel was dead.

 

But Dean knew he was struggling. He knew that sooner or later, even with his own prodigious skill at battling sleep, it was going to come round and bite him. He was only human, no matter how many times he’d been anything but, and it would catch up to him eventually. If he was really lucky, they’d all die in the inevitable collision.

 

Occasionally he would glance in the rear view mirror at the Nephilim sleeping in the back seat, his conversation with Sam still ringing in his ears. His brother thought there was hope there. Dean didn’t. He saw a mission. He saw the inevitability of fate, because Jack was Lucifer’s son, which meant he was going to go bad, just as Dean being John’s son meant that he was going to lose everything.

 

Sighing, he glanced to Sam. He loved the kid, he did, but Dean knew that Sam’s optimism blinded him. Okay, so he’d forgiven it, but Sam had sided with the Men of Letters when Dean had told him to make a choice, and look where that had led them.

 

If Sam was going to be the leader now, going to make his own decisions, then Dean had to respect them no matter how crazy he thought they were. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to have a back up plan. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t be ready with a weapon when Sam’s new project went dark side. Sam had to respect that too.

 

His eyes returned to the road. It was a straight, lonely bit of highway, which made it too easy for his thoughts to wander. Too damn easy. Too easy to see the shape of a man in a tan trench coat on the side of the road, or glance into his rearview mirror and glimpse Castiel sleeping there instead of Jack.

 

The Impala skidded sideways along the road, rubber burning as Dean jammed down on the brakes and wrenched the wheel sideways to keep them from flying off into a field of corn. Jack was thrown awake in the back seat, and Sam, who had been dozing, shot forward in indignation the moment inertia cease, and snatched the keys out of the ignition.

 

“Sam!”

 

“No, Dean! No way!”

 

Dean tried his most threatening big brother voice. “Give me back the keys.”

 

“What, so you can try and kill us again? No, Dean. What the hell happened, anyway? Did you drop off?”

 

“There was a sheep in the road,” he lied.

 

“There wasn’t a sheep, Dean.”

 

“How do you know? You were asleep.”

 

“My eyes were open. There wasn’t a sheep.” Sam glowered at him.

 

“So you’re saying I hallucinated it?” Dean asked, sharply.

 

“Yes, Dean. You hallucinated a sheep. There are no sheep!” Sam opened his door briskly, getting out so that he could wave his hand into the night. “Do you see any sheep out here?”

 

While Jack looked flustered and uncertain in the back seat, watching them argue with wide eyes like a child who’d just been woken from a strange dream only to be even more startled that he was sleeping at all, Sam walked all the way around the Impala, opening Dean’s side.

 

“Get out.”

 

“Come on, Sam…”

 

“Get out, Dean. Get out of the car. I’m going to find us a motel.”

 

Eventually Dean got out, but he resolved to protest the rest of the way. This was a terrible idea, and it was going to get someone killed, Dean just knew it.

 

\-----

 

2.

 

He didn’t want to be in a bed.

 

He didn’t want to be in a room, he didn’t want to be trying to get some sleep, and he didn’t want to be on the goddamn planet Earth right now either. But here he was. It was inescapable. The cracked motel room ceiling was a blank canvas of misery above him, stained from damp, and covered in smudges where people had smashed mosquitoes into the paintwork. A particularly ugly spider had made its home in the corner, and where the paint wasn’t mouldy it was chipped and broken instead.

 

If he went to sleep then today would end. If he slept then sooner or later he would have to let Castiel go, and when he did that he’d lose him forever. Sleeping was loss, and Dean had had just about as much loss as he could take.

 

But he was drifting. He was drifting anyway, slipping from consciousness, ebbing…

 

Castiel was sitting at the end of the bed watching Scooby Doo. A single spark of light was shining out of a hole in his back, a pinprick of gold the only proof that Dean was dreaming, and this wasn’t really his angel come back to him.

 

For a moment, Dean thought he wouldn’t speak. Hallucinations didn’t, but dreams occasionally did. He should have remembered that. But then Cas turned toward him and smiled sadly.

 

“Hello, Dean.”

 

Two words and his heart ached so much that he didn’t want to hear even one more. But this dream had been sent to torture him. He knew it. This was his new Hell.

 

“What are you doing?” Cas asked. “What are you doing, Dean?”

 

Dean pulled himself upright, putting his back to the end of the bed. He stared at the apparition.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

Cas stared back.

 

“ _Fine_ ,” Dean spat. “Fine, I know what I’m doing. You know why it’s got to be this way. He’s the reason you’re gone, Cas. You trusted him, you put your faith in him, and now _you’re dead_ because of him. That’s what happens.”

 

“I’m not dead because of Jack, Dean. I’m dead because I thought it was my responsibility to kill Lucifer. I’m dead because I saw the chance, and because I thought it was the useful thing to do, and because even though I gave everything, it wasn’t enough.”

 

Dean twisted his face away. He couldn’t stand to look at Castiel, couldn’t look at the bright spot on his chest any longer. It was killing him.

 

“You should have stayed,” he said at last. “You should have stayed with us, with me. I needed you to stay.”

 

The touch of a hand against his jaw drew his attention forcefully up. Castiel was sitting right beside him, touching his face, looking into his eyes. Dean only knew he was crying because Cas’ face was looking blurrier by the second, and the angel’s thumb smudged through his forming tears. For a moment Dean even thought that Cas would lean in and kiss them away.

 

“I’m sorry, Dean. I wanted to.”

 

“Please, Cas. Please. I need you. Why did you leave me? Why did you have to go and leave? I can’t do this without you.”

 

He flung his arms around the angel’s neck, pressed his face into Cas’ shirt and began to sob, but as he did, Castiel caught fire, the flames rising higher, the smoke choking him, blinding him, burning his hands…

 

Darkness swamped him. Dean was wrapped around his pillow, tears running silently down his face, when consciousness tugged him back into the waking world.

 

Sam and Jack were still sleeping, their breathing steady, Jack’s left hand draped across the bible in his lap. It wasn’t burning, even if Dean vehemently believed it ought to be.

 

\-----

 

3.

 

The bar was empty but for the waitress. Even if she were his type, Dean wouldn’t have noticed. Not today. He had no interest in trying to find physical distraction. He was too tired, and it was all just so…so pointless.

 

Besides, he was here to get away from Jack, Sam and Donatello. He needed the break, needed time with his own thoughts, needed to be away from…from _it_.

 

Was it just to torture him that Jack looked and sounded so much like Cas? He was so eager to please, and yet so terribly literal. That crap where he went and stood in the corridor? That was something Cas would have done, with the same frowny-squint on his face the entire time. And the copycat behaviour? Sam obviously found it endearing, but all it did for Dean was dig in sharp claws and rake through his already tattered heart all over again.

 

Jack wanted to be like him, and what hurt almost as bad as losing Cas was the fact that Dean just didn’t think anyone _should_ want to be like him, least of all potentially the most powerful being in the world. Jack was a catastrophe waiting to happen, and if he tried to be like Dean then that would surely just be compounded. Dean was a curse. He knew that now. The people he loved always, always died, and every decision he ever made ended in worse things happening, over and over again.

 

No, Jack shouldn’t be like him. If Dean could put a stop to anything, it would be any effort the kid was trying to make to imprint on him. He’d drive him away even harder if he had to.

 

For now he just couldn’t take it. He needed the space, needed to be away from it all, needed to just close his eyes and pretend that the world was a normal place and he was a normal person, when it felt like nothing would ever be normal again.

 

Leaning against the counter, his drink half ignored at his side, Dean thumbed his way through his phone apps. He couldn’t play Scrabble because it reminded him of his mom, and Candy Crush was off the cards because Cas loved it so much.

 

Cas.

 

Without thinking, Dean drew up his old text messages. They were _old_ text messages, because Cas had stopped answering his calls and texts for so long, but Dean had kept the sequences he found particularly endearing or funny. In fact it was safe to say that his collection of old texts with Cas was the reason why he hadn’t replaced his phone. Changed the handset, sure, when evil witches had smashed the screen, but…

 

Dean sighed, idly flicked his thumb across the screen, halting abruptly when he found an unread message tucked in among the others. It was from just after Christmas.

 

**Castiel** _: Dean. Thank you for the gift. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at the time. Nobody has ever made anything for me before. I’m grateful that you wished to share your music with me. I know how much Led Zeppelin means to you. I’m going to listen to it now, and let you know what I think._

 

Sure enough there was a second message attached to the thread, sent just half an hour later.

 

 **Castiel** : _Dean, I’m not sure about this. In this one song, the lead singer sounds like he’s having sex with someone during the recording session, and, quite frankly, I can guess what a lemon is when it’s used in this context. It makes me feel very uncomfortable. Is it meant to be like that?_

Dean licked his lips, looking down at the unanswered question, at the blinking cursor that suggested that he should write a reply and put Cas out of his misery. Instead, the waitress tried to catch his attention, and Dean looked up from his phone to acknowledge her.

 

He still really needed to finish his drink…


End file.
